Geographies of infrastructure II: Concrete, cloud and layered (in)visibilities

Abstract

In this second progress report on infrastructure, I concentrate on the evolving infrastructures of our digital worlds, or ‘cloudfrastructures’. While there is an extensive literature in geography on the digital, less attention has been paid to its infrastructures. In this report I explore their relationships to other infrastructures, to nature, and to flow. I argue that paying attention to cloudfrastructures calls for new thinking on the axiom of (in)visibility in infrastructure studies, alerting us to (in)visibility as layered, multiple and orchestrated. Thinking of (in)visibility in this way also calls for an engagement with infrastructure beyond materiality.